Kwame Alexander has challenged us to write a clerihew this month. What's a clerihew, you ask? Click HERE for details.

YOU HAVE UNTIL 5:00 PM (ET) TODAY to send
your funny four-liner to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com,
or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. For inspiration, visit this month's wrap-up celebration to read the entire collection of clerihews.

One
lucky participant will be randomly chosen to receive an autographed copy of THE CROSSOVER, which
received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished
contribution to American literature for children.

Kwame Alexander has challenged us to write a clerihew this month. What's a clerihew, you ask? Click HERE for details.

You
still have a few days to send
your funny four-liner to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com,
or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. Contributions must
be received by this Thursday, April 30th, at 5:00 p.m. (ET). For inspiration, visit this month's wrap-up celebration to read the entire collection of clerihews.

One
lucky participant will be randomly chosen to receive an autographed copy of THE CROSSOVER, which
received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished
contribution to American literature for children.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Kwame Alexander has challenged us to write a clerihew this month. What's a clerihew, you ask? Click HERE for details.

You still have a few days to send
your funny four-liner to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com,
or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. Contributions must
be received by this Thursday, April 30th, at 5:00 p.m. (ET). For inspiration, visit this month's wrap-up celebration to read the entire collection of clerihews.

One
lucky participant will be randomly chosen to receive an autographed copy of THE CROSSOVER, which
received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished
contribution to American literature for children.

For many of us, it was our first time writing a clerihew. For me, it won't be the last. This fun exercise resulted in plenty of smiles, a few giggles, and a whole lot of head-nodding. I also discovered that we're a considerate bunch of writerly folks, since the majority of participants took this opportunity to pay tribute to, rather than poke fun at, our chosen subjects.

We'll have to work on that.

Many thanks to Kwame for helping us celebrate

National Poetry Month and for inspiring us to try something new!

Without further ado, here are the Ditty of the Month Club clerihews. Enjoy!

All poems are copyright 2015, and published with permission of the authors, who control all rights.

Celebrating Kwame Alexander...

When I think of the newest Newbery Kwame Alexander
I remember sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,
Women aren't the only ones who love romance and mo',
Real men eat poetry for breakfast, so let the words go!

–Brenda Harsham

Kwame is the current word weaver king,
spreading "the love" that language will bring.
As poet extraordinaire, family man, and spaghetti lover,
he tells great tales, but from his little one runs for cover.

– Carol Varsalona

Kwame Alexander wrote a book in poetry,
THE CROSSOVER won the Newbery,
and he will hit you with his purse
if you fail to call it a NOVEL in verse.

– Joy Acey

Kwame Alexander is Da Man!
I am now his number one fan.
The CROSSOVER, a book of great means,
And a bridge from poetry to teens.

– Angie Karcher

and other masters of poetry.

Issa hailed from old Japan
a poet and a simple man.
On family he could not depend
so flea or fly became a friend.

– Diane Mayr*A fabulous illustrated version can be found at Random Noodling.

EDGAR ALLAN POE
by Lana Wayne Koehler

Edgar Allan Poe
His mysterious death apropos
He wrote of a Raven and wrote about crime
And totally rhymed sublime

Paying tribute to Today's Little Ditty...

MS. BARNES
by Mindy Gars Dolandis

Hats off to our fearless leader Michelle
For featuring poets who write very well
And allowing us others to pen something pretty
For her wonderful website, Today's Little Ditty

Michelle Heidenrich Barnes loves children's poetry
at Today's Little Ditty you can read it for free.
It's where she posts challenges, and if you hustle
you'll be able to stretch your poetry muscle.

– Joy Acey

and a few more familiar faces.

Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong:

Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong compile anthologies for fun.
Pomelo Books' Poetry Friday Anthologies are for everyone.
Giving poetry and children, firm foundations
their latest book is for CELEBRATIONS.

– Joy Acey

Renée M. LaTulippe:

I want to sing verse like Renée
she treats you to a lyrical buffet
her poetry's a golden chain
in relation mine gives tummy pain.

– Robyn Campbell

Susanna Leonard Hill:

An author named Susanna Hill,
who writes perfect picture books still,
parties and drinks eggnog
with Phyllis the groundhog.

– Kristi Dee Veitenheimer

Jama Rattigan:

Jama shines above the rest,
cooks up blog posts filled with zest.
She's not gilding on a lily,
she's the allspice in our chili!

– Mary Lee Hahn

Recognizing our favorite entertainers...

FOR THIS LADY, A CLERIHEW DEBUT
by Linda Baie

Listen! Announcing that Lady called Gaga
whose trade clothes fill scenes of an ongoing saga.
Yet who cares what she wears when she sings us a tune?
for that’s when she makes us fall into a swoon.

THE ADVICE OF SPIKE
by Charles Waters

Spike Lee sits next to me
Arms crossed, sad as can be,
He begs me, “Please, do the right thing
Never again attempt trying to sing.”

THE PERFECT WIFE AND MOTHER
by LeeAnn Blankenship

In the 50's we learned the ideal was June Cleaver,
But she was a fake, an over-achiever;
I'll bet she has changed, put her past on the shelf,
Now saying at mealtime, "Just fix it yourself!"

ROBIN WILLIAMS
by Danielle Hammelef

Robin Williams, you made me laugh.
I wanted to be Mindy, your earthling half.
Good Morning, Vietnam woke the world to your gift.
And Euphegenia Doubtfire gave the world a face lift.

Mr. Music, Ray Conniff, and his world famous singers
Mixed choral la-las with triangle dingers
Their grand music swung from big band to rock
Each song a hit from Elvis to Bach

Perhaps he was a bit crazy, old Ben
Conducting one of his experiments again
But his brilliant findings could not be disputed
It's a good thing he wasn't electrocuted

ELIZABETH ENVIRONMENTALIST KOLBERT
by Michelle Kogan

Elizabeth Kolbert has men’s shirttails all a tither,
cause her Sixth Extinction book makes them quiver.
If this extinction’s an unnatural history...
Straighten those shirttails and protect earth’s destiny.

Super smart Francis Crick
never missed a mathematical trick.
Tall and thin, a true British highbrow,
in possession of the most epic eyebrows.

Amelia Earhart, aviator,
lived for now instead of later.
Told that girls were not robust,
she up and left them in her dust.

SUPERHERO SNAG
by Leane Gill

Dear Spider-Man and Superman, I see plenty of trouble.
The fact your names both end in "man" needs fixing on the double.
I know plenty of girls at school who like to fight crime too.
And thinking it's just for boys-really makes us blue.

and anyone else who tickles our fancies.

MAN IN THE MOON
by Rosi Hollinbeck

I’m Man in the Moon,
not some bad cartoon!
My crescent
is a shimmery pearlescent.

A skunk dined on grubs outside my front door.
When I thought it was done, it gobbled up more.
I waited 'til dawn in my living room,
Not wanting to risk wearing polecat perfume.

– Danielle Hammelef

Edward Snowden
Rolled the dice & passed Go, then
Landed on NSA utilities
And had to pay ten times over for his abilities.

– Julie Larios

He's my own celebrity: My husband Chuck, is cooking's best
he creates pizza with lots of zest.
And when he makes his spaghetti
he throws in allspice like confetti.

– Jone Rush MacCulloch

Looks like fun, doesn't it?

Who would you choose to write about?

If you'd still like to try your hand at writing a clerihew, you can find all the details HERE. Send it to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. I will continue to add poems to this wrap-up post until Thursday, April 30th at 5:00 pm (ET).

Participants in this month's challenge will be automatically entered to
win an autographed copy of Kwame Alexander's 2015 Newbery winner THE CROSSOVER, courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (One entry
per participant, not per poem.)

Alternatively, you may enter the giveaway by commenting below. If you
contribute a poem and comment below you will earn two entries in
total. Comments must also be received by Thursday, April 30th at 5:00 pm (ET).

The winner will be determined by Random.org and announced next Friday, May 1st, when we reveal our new Spotlight ON interview and ditty
challenge.

Good luck!

Where did April go in such a hurry? The last Poetry Friday roundup of National Poetry Month is being hosted by the lovely and lyrical Renée LaTulippe at No Water River. See you there!

Kwame Alexander has challenged us to write a clerihew this month. What's a clerihew, you ask? Click HERE for details.

Send
your funny four-liner to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com,
or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions
will be included in a wrap-up celebration TOMORROW, April 24th. One
lucky participant will win an autographed copy of THE CROSSOVER, which
received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished
contribution to American literature for children.

Kwame Alexander has challenged us to write a clerihew this month. What's a clerihew, you ask? Click HERE for details.

Send
your funny four-liner to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com,
or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions
will be included in a wrap-up celebration this Friday, April 24th. One
lucky participant will win an autographed copy of THE CROSSOVER, which
received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished
contribution to American literature for children.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Kwame Alexander has challenged us to write a clerihew this month. What's a clerihew, you ask? Click HERE for details.

Send
your funny four-liner to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com,
or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions
will be included in a wrap-up celebration this Friday, April 24th. One
lucky participant will win an autographed copy of THE CROSSOVER, which
received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished
contribution to American literature for children.

Kwame Alexander has challenged us to write a clerihew this month. What's a clerihew, you ask? Click HERE for details.

Send
your funny four-liner to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com,
or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions
will be included in a wrap-up celebration this Friday, April 24th. One
lucky participant will win an autographed copy of THE CROSSOVER, which
received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished
contribution to American literature for children.

One of the questions I’m often asked by students is whether monosyllabic words can be either stressed or unstressed in a line of verse.

That one is easy to answer: yes.

All words have ONE primary stressed syllable. Look at these words:

PAN-cakes re-VIEW hi-BIS-cus CON-tra-ry

If that is so, and it is, then it stands to reason that monosyllabic words consist of one stressed syllable. But when put into a line of metered verse, the placement will decide whether the word is stressed or unstressed within the context of the line.

Let’s take the word baked and see how the stress changes when used in different positions in the same meter.

iambic:

she BAKED a THOU-sand COOK-ies

she CAN’T bake ALL those COOK-ies

dactylic:

THOU-sands of COOK-ies baked OUT in the SUN

THOU-sands of COOK-ies have BAKED in the SUN

You could continue this exercise for other meters, too.

The same is true for multisyllabic words: it all depends on position. Take the word never. All by itself, it is a trochaic word: NEV-er.

But in this dactylic line, it would work as two unstressed syllables:

BOB nev-er SAT on a TACK in his LIFE

Stressed syllables are just like real estate: location, location, location. The important thing is that you don't mess with the stress. That is, you don’t force a stress where it shouldn’t go, as in this iambic line:

will BOB sit ON a TACK? nev-ER!

We just can’t make people say nev-ER, and that’s that.

I’ve also had students think that if a word is naturally trochaic (or iambic, dactylic, anapestic), then it can only be used in that meter – so the word never could only be used in trochaic meter. As we see from the dactylic line above, this is not so. Location, location, location.

I’ll leave you with a few more examples of how a word or phrase can work in any meter if you get the placement just right. Please welcome my lovely assistant, the elusive dodo bird.

Here it is in dactyl form:

Frederick William Frohawk, 1905. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia

And here iambic:

Edwards' Dodo, Roelant Savery, 1626. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia

And here anapestic:

Frederick William Frohawk, 1907. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia

And here trochaic:

Hugh Edwin Strickland, 1848. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia

Give it a try!

Write a line of verse in each of the four major meters using one of the following words (or one of your own). Feel free to share your lines in the comments.

Kwame Alexander has challenged us to write a clerihew this month. What's a clerihew, you ask? Click HERE for details.

Send
your funny four-liner to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com,
or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions
will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, April 24th. One
lucky participant will win an autographed copy of THE CROSSOVER, which
received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished
contribution to American literature for children.

Kwame Alexander has challenged us to write a clerihew this month. What's a clerihew, you ask? Click HERE for details.

Send
your funny four-liner to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com,
or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions
will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, April 24th. One
lucky participant will win an autographed copy of THE CROSSOVER, which
received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished
contribution to American literature for children.

Kwame Alexander has challenged us to write a clerihew this month. What's a clerihew, you ask? Click HERE for details.

Send
your funny four-liner to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com,
or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions
will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, April 24th. One
lucky participant will win an autographed copy of THE CROSSOVER, which
received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished
contribution to American literature for children.

Kwame Alexander has challenged us to write a clerihew this month. What's a clerihew, you ask? Click HERE for details.

Send
your funny four-liner to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com,
or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions
will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, April 24th. One
lucky participant will win an autographed copy of THE CROSSOVER, which
received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished
contribution to American literature for children.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

For me, one of the best parts of National Poetry Month is taking part in Irene Latham's annual Progressive Poem. It's exciting, spontaneous, fun, and because it's a community writing experience, it takes on a life of its own. From April 1-30, a poem travels from blog to blog, each host adding a new line daily. The results are always richly layered, with a piece of every poet who takes part and the
collected anticipation of everyone who has been following its journey. It's a beautiful thing.

So today it's my turn. But before I dive in, I hope you'll indulge me as I take a moment to share a surprise clerihew I received this week:

Michelle Heidenrich Barnes loves children's poetryat Today's Little Ditty you can read it for free.It's where she posts challenges, and if you hustleyou'll be able to stretch your poetry muscle.

What to do with a delta girl who strokes her grandmother's turquoise bracelet and magically transforms into a mermaid?!! I'm not sure. But I will tell you that with our departure into mermaid sensibility, I'm loving Jone MacCulloch's opening phrase, "she lives without a net," more than ever.

What kind of magic is this?

No clue.

Where did it come from?

Aha! Here we go....

She lives without a net, walking along the alluvium of the delta.Shoes swing over her shoulder, on her bare feet stick jeweled flecks of dark mica.

Hands faster than fish swing at the ends of bare brown arms. Her hair flows,snows in wild wind as she digs in the indigo varnished handbag,

pulls out her grandmother's oval cuffed bracelet,strokes the turquoise stones, and steps through the curved doorway.

Tripping on her tail she slips hair first down the slide... splash!She glides past glossy water hyacinth to shimmer with a school of shad,

listens to the ibises roosting in the trees of the cypress swamp– an echo of Grandmother's words, still fresh in her windswept memory.

Kwame Alexander has challenged us to write a clerihew this month. What's a clerihew, you ask? Click HERE for details.

Send your funny four-liner to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com,
or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions
will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, April 24th. One
lucky participant will win an autographed copy of THE CROSSOVER, which
received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished
contribution to American literature for children.

Kwame Alexander has challenged us to write a clerihew this month. What's a clerihew, you ask? Click HERE for details.

Send
your funny four-liner to TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com,
or use the contact form in the sidebar to the right. All contributions
will be included in a wrap-up celebration on Friday, April 24th. One
lucky participant will win an autographed copy of THE CROSSOVER, which
received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished
contribution to American literature for children.

About Me

I write children's poetry, picture books, and greeting card copy. My creative challenge is to bring out the natural musicality and rhythm of words and let them bounce around (and otherwise run amok) within the sphere of my imagination. Please visit my website at MichelleHBarnes.com

TLD Contributors

The following poet/authors contribute educational posts to Today's Little Ditty. Please click on their names to explore their series.

Ditty of the Month Club (DMC)

Submit your poem for the current month's challenge by clicking on the link at the top of the page. Click on the DMC star (above) for links to past challenges. Click "Spotlight ON Interviews" (below) for a complete list of interviews to date.

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In accordance with the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA), Today's Little Ditty does not seek personal information of children under age 13. If a child under age 13 chooses to comment on a post or otherwise participate on this blog (by submitting a poem, for example), he or she must do so via a parent or with written parental consent. Comments or poems submitted by children under 13 without parental consent will be deleted.